FireFly, I don't think you get it. Cisco itself is the largest TelePresence deployment. Besides using them for internal meetings, of course, there are also the cases where a customer can come in to their local Cisco office and meet with a larger Cisco team, both local and remote-- saving that remote team from flying out to the customer.
Yes, this isn't always the "professional" way to do things, but corporate travel just to meet and greet is going the way of the three-martini lunch.
And read the cited article- there was more than TelePresence involved in paring money from travel. Gulliver seems to challenge Cisco's spending hundreds of millions on travel related expenses in 2008-- for a company of Cisco's size and breadth, how much did Gulliver expect, single-digit millions?

The real question is not what Cisco spends -- it's the degree of disintermediation that improving remote conferencing technology will have on business travel. I think the jury is still out on that. Digital storage technologies were supposed to create a paperless office, but only seemed to create a greater need for paper. On the other hand, email has all but rendered faxes obsolete. Certainly video meetings will replace business travel for some purposes, but I don't think one can rule out the possibility that it will also create the need for it in other circumstances. Will that lead to a net increase or decrease in overall business travel, particularly when the economy improves?

While telepresence can play an important role in a company's visual communications program, interoperable video conferencing across the enterprise is required to truly experience all of the benefits of visual collaboration. When every worker has ad hoc access to video communications from their laptop, desktop and conference rooms, businesses will usher in a new way of working that is less dependent on air travel.

There will always be a need for face to face communication. What airlines should be worrying about is how much of a need businesses will have for it. I suspect as technologies improve in the realm of sharing documents live, the cost of a meeting call nearing zero, etc, etc that they won't have much of a need for it most of the time.